


In Essence, Divided

by Wolf_of_Lilacs



Series: Through a Glass Darkly [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jekyll and Hyde Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, F/F, Female Harry Potter, Female Tom Riddle, Female Voldemort, Horror, Implied Cannibalism, Knifeplay, Pseudoscience, nonconsensual cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 03:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16484945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolf_of_Lilacs/pseuds/Wolf_of_Lilacs
Summary: Her phone read 2:13 a.m.





	In Essence, Divided

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to post this on Halloween, and almost succeeded.
> 
> This is fucked up. Mind the tags.

"Harriet?"

 

Harriet woke with a violent start from an innocuous dream about someone teaching cats to tap dance to find Tommie shaking her, desperate. "What?" Harriet mumbled.

 

"Harriet, I've made a terrible mistake."

 

"And it couldn't wait till morning?" Harriet rubbed her eyes and sat up. The time on her phone read 2:13 a.m.

 

"No," Tommie said. "It could not." She drew Harriet against her in a tight embrace. Harriet didn't mind it, enjoyed her scent... but Tommie was never quite so spontaneously demonstrative. What the fuck had she done?

 

"It was an experiment," Tommie said, "the after-hours one not sanctioned by the university."

 

Oh, yes. The one that had eaten up Tommie's time like nothing else ever had, had kept her at her lab all hours of the day, mixing concoctions of chemicals Harriet had never heard of and then distilling them into horrific products. Every time Harriet asked what the fuck she was doing, Tommie had evaded the question.

 

"So, your experiment failed?" Harriet asked, bleary.

 

"No," Tommie said. "My experiments never fail. It succeeded, far better than I could have dreamed." Tommie sighed. "I should not have dreamed."

 

Harriet awkwardly patted her shoulder, still confused. "Well, sleep here the rest of the night," she said. That had been Tommie's intention, but Harriet wasn't about to deny her permission or to kick her out.

 

"Thank you, darling." Tommie let Harriet go and curled up beneath the blanket on her side of the bed, trembling and cold. Harriet moved closer to her, tangling her legs with Tommie's and lending her some of her warmth.

 

When Harriet woke in the morning to get ready for work, Tommie already sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee, her favorite chemistry journal abandoned in front of her. "I can't bear to look at it," Tommie muttered, sensing Harriet's curiosity. "It only reminds me of my foolishness."

 

"Are you ever going to tell me what happened?" Harriet sighed, pouring coffee for herself and settling across from her.

 

"I wished to bring out the deepest parts of humankind," Tommie said, her voice taking on a tone of mystery. "The parts we suppress because of society's strictures, the parts of which we are most ashamed."

 

"Okay," Harriet said. "What parts are those?" The only thing Harriet could think of to be ashamed was her social awkwardness, but it was never the right time of day for that.

 

"The basest parts," Tommie murmured. "Unfettered by law, immune to judgment, free to do as one wishes." She smiled, and Harriet shivered. There was something behind that smile, something harsh and terrible, something Tommie rarely showed so openly.

 

(But she did show it at times: The night they’d met two years ago, both of them drunk and horny, Tommie had looked at her with an expression so hungry that Harriet ought to have fled. Instead… Instead they’d crashed together. Harriet had awakened the next morning, sore and loose and content, and the two of them hadn’t really parted since.)

 

"And you've found a way to let it out," Harriet concluded.

 

"Oh, yes," Tommie said. "But once let out, it does not enjoy being caged again." Then she put a hand to her mouth as if she were going to be sick, rose from her seat, and hurried down the hall. Harriet heard her retching.

 

Harriet found Tommie leaning over the toilet, her face covered in sweat. "Maybe you should stay here today," she suggested. "Call in sick."

 

"I cannot leave my laboratory unattended," Tommie muttered, then fainted, falling sideways onto the floor. Harriet somehow managed to hoist one of her arms over her shoulder and maneuver into the bedroom. She helped her under the blankets, then fetched a glass of water and set it on the nightstand.

 

"I could stay here with you," Harriet offered when Tommie seemed to be coming to.

 

"No," Tommie said, her dark eyes pleading. "No, please go." She rolled onto her side, turning her back on Harriet.

 

"You sure?"

 

"Yes," Tommie snapped.

 

"Whatever. Just give me a call if you change your mind." Harriet gathered her things together and headed to the bus stop. She worked as an administrative assistant in the university's English department. The bus was convenient.

 

Work was monotonous as ever. Harriet organized files and made phone calls, ordered pizza for a meeting, got snapped at by a colleague. She couldn't stop thinking about Tommie, who so rarely showed weakness. She called Tommie at lunchtime to see if she needed anything, but was sent straight to voicemail.

 

When Harriet arrived home, exhausted and concerned, Tommie was nowhere to be found.

 

*

 

 _Man's body found mutilated in the street; may be missing heart_ , the _Times's_ headline blared the next morning. Harriet blinked at it. The street in question was only a few blocks from her apartment. "Nothing like this has been seen in years, and we are at a loss," the police were quoted as saying. "If anyone knows anything, please come forward."

 

Oh god. Harriet felt her stomach churn at the very blurred picture of blood-spattered pavement. Good thing today was Saturday. She didn't have to go out.

 

She went out anyway. There were things to be done. Grocery shopping. She picked up an extra bottle of vitamin C, in case Tommie needed it.

 

Harriet kept trying Tommie's phone, and continued getting no answer.

 

*

 

"Harriet!"

 

Harriet started violently from an innocuous dream about someone narrating their attempts at teaching cats to tap dance. Someone was shaking her, hands so cold that her skin erupted in goose bumps.

 

"What?" Harriet muttered, trying to sit up, but whoever woke her would not allow it, their hands heavy on her shoulders.

The time on her phone read 2:13 a.m.

 

"I thought it was time I introduced myself," this strange apparition said. Their voice was unfamiliar, high and raspy.

 

"Who are you?" Harriet said, trying to wriggle free.

 

They leaned closer, and Harriet could see their face in the faint glimmer of moonlight. She screamed, but a hand was pressed immediately to her mouth. "Do not make a sound."

 

The face was pallid, chalky. The nose was flattened to slits. The eyes were scarlet like blood, with pupils like a cat’s. "What are you?" Harriet tried to say, but a hand was still pressed to her mouth.

 

"I am Lord Voldemort," they said. "Your dear little girlfriend didn't mention me?" They—maybe she, Harriet thought, but she really had no idea—smiled a horrible, lipless smile, with too sharp teeth and no mirth. "I know her intimately, far more than you ever have."

 

Tommie was cheating on her? That couldn't be right. Harriet was sure of that. In the two years they'd been together, there'd never even been a hint of it. The only thing Tommie had ever spent too much time with was her experiments, and—

 

"What have you done to her?" Harriet screamed. The hand was lifted from her mouth.

 

"You may ask, but do not dare scream, or I will choke you."

 

"What have you done with Tommie?" Harriet repeated, breathless. "I haven’t been able to get a hold of her, and she was sick and talking about—"

 

"Oh, you are sweet," Voldemort hissed, leaning so that long, black hair swung against Harriet's face. It smelled familiar, like the all-natural peppermint shampoo Tommie used. Oh god, maybe she really had cheated on her…

 

"Oh, you have no need of Tommie, pet," Voldemort replied. "And she has no need of anything at all." And to Harriet's horror, Voldemort pulled back the blankets and slid in beside her, pressing close against her, so cold, nothing but sharp angles and sharp nails.

 

"No. What? Go away!" Harriet protested, cringing away and scrabbling for her phone to call the police or anyone. Voldemort easily reached across and plucked it from her hand.

 

"I have no wish to kill you, but if you attempt to make a call…"

 

Harriet wanted to whimper.

 

"Now sleep," Voldemort encouraged, as if she hadn't just threatened murder.

 

Needless to say, Harriet did not sleep. She lay stiffly on her side, Voldemort pressed against her back. She did manage to doze off for a moment or two, but Voldemort's hand found its way to her hip, then downward, between her legs. Harriet started, tried to push her away, and found it as fruitless as it had ever been. "Fuck you, get off," she said.

 

"Everything that is Tommie's is also mine," Voldemort replied easily, "therefore you are mine, and I may do as I wish."

 

"No," Harriet said. "That isn't how this works." Who the fuck was this bitch, thinking she could waltz in like this? And where the fuck did she get keys?

 

Morning could not have come soon enough. When it did, Harriet realized that Voldemort had fallen asleep, her grip slackening just enough that Harriet could gently pry herself free. She hurried to the bathroom. When she returned, Voldemort had vanished as if she had never been there at all.

 

Harriet called Tommie, the phone nearly slipping from her trembling fingers several times. Tommie picked up on the first ring. "Hello?" She sounded awful, her voice thick with phlegm.

 

Harriet had been prepared to confront her over the suspected cheating, but she just couldn't. "Are you okay?"

 

"I'm right outside your apartment," Tommie muttered. "Could you come out and—"

 

"Of course." She should just leave her out there… but no. Harriet was too soft for her own good sometimes, and she knew it. Tommie was curled up right outside the apartment, as she'd said, her hair tousled as if she were fresh from sleep. "When did you get here?" Harriet asked, helping her to stand and walk across the threshold.

 

"I don't know," Tommie said. "I don't know." Her voice rose in the beginnings of panic. "I woke up here."

 

"You did? How long ago?" There was something strange about Tommie's appearance, not including how drawn and pale she was, but Harriet couldn’t quite put her finger on it. "What have you been doing for the past day?" Harriet directed Tommie to the sofa in the sitting room and brought her a blanket. No way she was letting her in the bed, at least until she knew she wasn't being made a fool of.

 

"I left here. I was going to work. I think I made it, and then…" Tommie's brows furrowed in thought. She tapped her fingers in increasing agitation. "Then everything was a blur."

 

"What happened, with your experiment?" Harriet clarified at Tommie’s listless head shake.

 

Tommie shivered, grimacing, drawing the blanket close about her shoulders. "Possibly more successful than I could ever have imagined."

 

"Who is Voldemort?" Harriet quashed the guilt she felt over interrogating someone so obviously sick and distraught, but she wanted answers. Last night needed an explanation.

 

"An associate," Tommie said, slumping.

 

"How long have you been fucking her?"

 

Tommie stared. "How long have I been…are you serious?"

 

"Well, yeah," Harriet snapped. "What else am I supposed to think when she barges here like she owns the place—and me—and smells like you?" And wore her clothes, she realized, the strangeness of Tommie's appearance suddenly making sense. And not just her clothes, but the same outfit.

 

"Because we are close friends." Pain flashed across Tommie's face, and she massaged her throat, her teeth clenched.

 

"Right." Harriet turned away. "Rest here again. I don't care what you do."

 

That morning, the main story in the _Times_ was not a continuation of the investigation of the murder from two nights ago, but an entirely new and equally horrific one, within blocks of the first. "Torn apart, like an animal might," one person said. Harriet gagged and hurriedly closed the article.

 

Harriet split her time between the bedroom and the sitting room, bringing Tommie water and cool rags. Tommie accepted her ministrations gratefully. She slept through the day, then, when Harriet was absorbed in preparing dinner, slipped out without a sound.

 

The next morning, instead of a new murder, was a report of a sighting of something "that ain't human, dammit. I know what I saw." "And what did you see?" the harried interviewer asked. "I don't rightly know, but it was like I'd imagine a demon straight out of hell would look like."

 

Harriet called Tommie for what felt like the hundredth time since she'd left the apartment. Still no answer.

 

During her lunch break, Harriet made the long walk from her building to Tommie's science building. "I need a key to Dr. Riddle's lab," she said to the chemistry department chair, whom she found brooding in his office.

 

"Dr. Riddle has special dispensation for her research, and her lab is not to be disturbed." He finally looked at her. "And who are you, anyway? I don’t recognize you."

 

Really? They had met before at open houses and presentations several times within the last couple years. "Look, something is wrong with Dr. Riddle, and I need a key to her lab." (Harriet was never what they expected, never who someone like Dr. Riddle should be associated with.)

 

He glowered. "Do you have written permission from her? I cannot give authorization otherwise." He rummaged through a drawer, for something to do. His expression went stiff. "And, incidentally, the spare key appears to have been misplaced. It will take time to get a new one made, time which I cannot afford, since you haven't given me a good enough reason."

 

Harriet huffed. "I'll get written permission."

 

"You do that, sweetheart. Now, please leave my office. I have proposals to go through."

 

Harriet left, staving off the urge to curse loudly until she made it back outside, then letting loose.

 

"Are you all right?"

 

"No!" she snapped at the innocent passerby, who moved away from her in quick, nervous steps.

 

"Well, sorry for asking."

 

Voldemort came again that night. She knelt near Harriet's head, cleaning something from her fingers with long, sensuous strokes of her tongue. "Back again?" Harriet sighed, reaching for her phone.

 

"Oh, yes." Voldemort knocked the phone from her hand, so quickly that Harriet barely saw her move. "If you call, you are dead."

 

When she lay beside her this time, Harriet felt a sticky dampness against her back. She shifted away. "What is on your shirt?"

 

Voldemort sat up to examine herself. "Ah. Just a few spatters."

 

"Of what?"

 

Instead of answering, Voldemort rolled Harriet over so that she was facing her, their legs tangling together. Harriet could smell the blood.

 

Yet another murder was reported the next morning. Harriet finally began to wonder, certain she should have made the connection sooner. Voldemort was nowhere to be found, of course. Harriet had never seen her in the day. Did she look the same in daylight? Could she be seen?

 

(Tommie couldn't cheat with a phantom.)

 

Someone knocked on the door, and Harriet gratefully set her phone aside to answer it.

 

It was Tommie. She looked…fine, Harriet supposed. Still drawn, but with enough makeup that it wasn't as noticeable. "I can give you a ride to work, if you want it. It's the least I can do to make up for the last couple days."

 

"Are you sure?" Harriet didn't trust this sentiment.

 

Tommie sighed. "Of course I'm sure. I've been unforgivably absent of late."

 

Well, Harriet supposed, she was more likely to get some answers if she consented. So she nodded and gathered her things.

 

Tommie's driving wasn't unusual in any way. "I need to talk to you, uninterrupted," she said, navigating through the congested intersections with her typical deftness.

 

"Oh, good," Harriet said. "A lunch date would be lovely."

 

"Yes," Tommie agreed.

 

"So, you've fixed your experiment," Harriet began, as they sat at a small table in the back corner of their favorite on-campus deli (favorite: most reasonably priced, most convenient to both their buildings).

 

"For now," Tommie replied, taking dainty bites of salad. "There may come a time when fixes like this are impossible."

 

"And how will things look then?"

 

Tommie tried to reply, then seemed to choke as she had days prior. "I cannot say," she wheezed.

 

"Why? It's your fucking experiment."

 

"It has gone far beyond me." Tommie took several swallows of water, sloshing some onto the table in her haste. “And far beyond my ability to _control_.” She slammed a hand onto the table hard enough to spill more water. Harriet jumped.

 

Tommie stayed over that night. There were no incidents. And in the morning, there were no new reports of murders.

 

"Huh," Harriet said, searching her news app for any mention. "Guess the new serial killer got bored." But Voldemort had been covered in blood when Harriet saw her last…

 

"Perhaps," Tommie said, noncommittal.

 

They drove to work. Nothing was out of the ordinary. Then Tommie said she'd be going home for the night, and that Harriet needn't worry. Harriet worried anyway.

 

Naturally, Voldemort returned that evening, oozing self-satisfaction. "Did you miss me?" she asked, lying back on Tommie's pillow, drawing Harriet against her with impossible strength.

 

"Not exactly," Harriet muttered. "Where did you go?"

 

"I was temporarily imprisoned. But I have broken my shackles and shall never be bound again."

 

Harriet shivered. "And where is Tommie? Have you…have you killed her?" Would Tommie's death be the one reported in the morning? Tommie's body be the one shown in unfocused photos posted online by enterprising, morbid observers? Harriet squeezed her eyes shut at the prospect, but the image of Tommie's bloody, torn corpse remained.

 

"Nothing so mundane." Voldemort placed an oddly tender kiss on Harriet's brow. "But in case of such an eventuality, she has willed everything to me.”

 

Harriet stiffened. That did not seem like something Tommie would do, unless under duress. Harriet felt a trickle of guilt then, for thinking Tommie had cheated. Voldemort must have blackmailed her somehow.

 

(But that didn't feel quite right. There was something, something that Harriet couldn't quite grasp, dangling just out of reach.)

 

"Don't think," Voldemort said, pushing Harriet's head back against her pillow. "Your little face can't bear it." She patted Harriet on the cheek.

 

Harriet tried to bite her as she pulled her hand away, but Voldemort merely laughed in delight. “That’s it, feisty pet. I may keep you yet.”

 

*

 

Harriet hadn't seen Tommie in several days, not since the day of their lunch date. She called the police to report her missing, but they said she was accounted for and not to worry, someone had called ahead of her. Voldemort's doing, no doubt. She almost told them of what she suspected about Voldemort, but then found herself afraid they would view her as complicit in the murders, and so kept it to herself.

 

Voldemort came every night, often without fanfare, and left before morning.

 

It wasn’t until Harriet was cleaning the kitchen on Saturday afternoon, when she caught sight of Tommie’s spare apartment key balanced precariously at the edge of the counter, that she realized what a fucking idiot she’d been.

 

Tommie’s apartment might have exactly what she wanted to know.

 

Harriet scooped up the key and rushed out the door. There would be no need to get written permission to get inside Tommie’s lab. (Seriously, fuck that guy.)

 

Tommie didn't keep much at her apartment. They both preferred Harriet's, since it was paid partly by the trust fund her parents left her. Tommie's was small and cramped, filled with boxes of papers and towering bookshelves. Harriet weaved through the organized clutter, reading the labels on the boxes for anything that might be relevant. In one corner, a stack of boxes was labeled "Chemical Basis of Personality." There were two or three of them, all stuffed to bulging with files and notebooks. She pulled one out at random, but the scribbles and equations were utter gibberish to her unrefined eye.

 

She struck gold with the next notebook. It was marked SENSITIVE (DO NOT LEAVE IN LAB) and was full, not of equations, but Tommie's musings. "A deeper part of oneself." "Unhindered by society's strictures." (How could Harriet forget Tommie saying this?)

 

There was a rustle, a displacement of air. Harriet started, dropping the notebook she held with a heavy thump.

 

"Do you understand yet?" A cool hand grasped Harriet about the throat from behind. Harriet kicked and elbowed, but it was no use, and she was turned around with ease.

 

Voldemort in daylight was incomprehensible, yet here she stood. In the dead of night, Harriet had almost assumed that she could not see her face properly, that it was merely a trick of the moonlight, but—

 

"What are you?" But she knew already. She needed to hear it spoken, needed confirmation that she wasn't dreaming or going mad.

 

"I am the result of a grand experiment. I am more than human, humanity at its basest, at its finest." Voldemort's hand cupped Harriet's cheek, her other still resting behind Harriet's neck. This close, Harriet could smell the blood on her breath and see the veins beneath her pale skin and the mix of dark and light ruddy hues in her eyes. "What is it she saw in you, I wonder? You are not of particular intelligence. You have embarrassing social limitations, rather antithetical to how she presented herself."

 

"I don't know. I've never known." All her insecurities came rushing back, and she could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

 

"We could find out." Voldemort smiled, and the expression was wrong wrong wrong.

 

"How?" Harriet whispered.

 

Voldemort slammed her onto the floor. Harriet’s head bounced, and she saw stars. "Like this, pet." Voldemort picked up a butcher knife from behind a nearby box, its blade gleaming silvery-rust in the faint chink of light from a shaded window. And in her hand, Harriet could see only—

 

Voldemort's hair tumbled past her shoulders in the precise way that Tommie's did. She wore one of Tommie's favorite blouses, dark purple silk that Harriet had gotten her for her last birthday. It suited Tommie. It was utterly strange to see it on Voldemort.

 

Voldemort preened at Harriet’s increasingly horrified scrutiny. She stroked the knife, kissed the blade, tossed it from hand to hand with sinister grace. "The knife," she murmured, holding it out for Harriet's inspection, "is the woman's weapon. What one lacks in genitalia, one can make up for with—"

 

And then Voldemort pounced, and there was cold, fiery pain in Harriet's gut. She parted the skin of Harriet's stomach with the ease of one knowledgeable in the art. Harriet tried to kick, but Voldemort sat heavily upon her legs. "You bleed such normal, uninspiring blood. We need to go deeper. But first…" Voldemort's head dipped low against Harriet's stomach, and Harriet felt the gentle—painful, fuck fuck—of a tongue, lapping at the blood the way a wolf might, before it buries its head in the belly of its prey. "Satisfactory, I suppose." Voldemort sat up, raising the knife once more.

 

"No—" Harriet was crying in earnest now: silent, futile sobs, the tears dripping into her hair.

 

Harriet felt herself drifting on this haze of agony. Her visual field narrowed to the top of Voldemort's dark head, bent and absorbed in her evisceration. "You are merely human," Voldemort decided. Harriet had no idea what she saw or how deep she'd gone. "But that's enough for today. Can't have you bleeding out all over the carpet."

 

Before she fainted, Harriet felt stinging and caught the smell of disinfectant.

 

*

 

"Tommie would have been disappointed to miss that," Harriet heard on waking, swaddled in blankets on what she took to be Tommie’s bed. "I believe I understand what it is she sees. Your bleeding and pleading and oh so desperate weeping are a balm to the soul." Voldemort hovered over her, almost solicitous.

 

“Fuck you,” Harriet rasped. Her stomach throbbed faintly. She felt it tenderly, finding a layer of bandages over a series of stitches. “How long have I been out?” Her words came slowly, her tongue fuzzy in her mouth.

 

“About twelve hours. I gave you an anesthetic to keep you from waking at an opportune time.” One of Voldemort’s hands, resting heavily upon Harriet’s chest, seemed to spasm and ripple, becoming momentarily less bony. Harriet was sure she imagined it. She examined Harriet’s stitches. “Good. This will scar. Tommie did not give it to you. Remember that.”

 

“I hate you,” Harriet snarled, trying to sit up.

 

“Don’t strain yourself just yet. We don’t want that lovely wound to reopen.”

 

“I’ll do what I fucking want!” Harriet clenched her feet and continued struggling.

 

“Tommie loved you, you know,” Voldemort mused, stopping Harriet short. “As much as she was able. Weak. So very weak.”

 

"Why are you speaking of her in past tense?" Harriet snapped. "She isn't dead!" She lay back, the room spinning sickeningly.

 

"Oh, but she may as well be," Voldemort rasped. "She never had the strength to fight me; she ached for my supremacy."

 

That didn't sound like the Tommie Harriet knew. Tommie always craved control, would never give it up if she could help it. Harriet voiced this thought.

 

"She gave up nothing, except full awareness. And if she kept it, she would approve of everything I have done."

 

“How can you know?”

 

There was something akin to pity in Voldemort’s chalky face. “Her thoughts, her memories, her desires…are my own.” She peeked beneath the edge of Harriet’s bandage. “You have pleased me. I shall keep you, after all.

 

“I don’t want to be kept, you fucking creep.” Harriet was so tired… “I could turn you in—"

 

"If you turn me in, you would lose her," Voldemort said. "You know it to be true."

 

She did know. If anything happened to Voldemort—imprisonment the very least of it—then she would lose any hope of drawing Tommie out again. "What about her job? Her life?"

 

Voldemort's thin lips twisted into a gleeful grin. "They were quite intrigued when I introduced myself," she noted. "An experiment went wrong, after all, and I, Tommie Riddle, am blessed with a new face."

 

"No," Harriet whimpered. "Tommie, please talk to me."

 

A muscle spasmed in Voldemort's cheek. "No," she said evenly. "She will not." She kissed Harriet with freezing lips. "Would you love me as you love her, I wonder?"

 

"No, never!"

 

"We'll see about that." Voldemort's sanguine eyes were fixed on Harriet's, her expression utterly inscrutable. Harriet could almost see Tommie there, in the hollows of Voldemort’s cheeks and the press of her lips, if she tilted her head just so and squinted. But her eyelids were heavy, and she couldn’t muster the energy.

 

“Rest now,” Voldemort said, her voice almost kind. “You have had quite an ordeal.” Harriet sank deep into the pillows. She could do nothing else.

 

As Harriet drifted off into natural sleep, Voldemort cuddled against her—so gentle—she wondered what she would wake to.


End file.
